
/ 





LETTER 




OF 



HON. JOSEPH SEGAR, 



u 



TO A FRIEND IN VIRGINIA, 






IN VINDICATION OF HIS COURSE IN DECLINING TO FOLLOVv' HIS 
STATE INTO SECESSION. 



-*f 



WASINGTON, D. C. 

WILLIAM H. MOORE, PRINTER. 

18G2. 






tion bei.g regarded an e.toely successful „„. ""^ ^''^- '''" ''-"'^»- 

fellow-cUizeus staUarl, involved T If ""''' '"'"^'"^ '" "'"ers of his 

P-nca«cn,and.enee;.;:::l r::jr.::': ""^"^ ^ 

tne Author, it is now given to tbe public. 



LETTER. 



-*>- 



Boston, November 3, 1861 , 



My Dear 



You urge me, on account of my distressed wife and children, 
to return to Virginia, if I can possibly, and with characteristic 
generosity, you offer to divide with them and me your humble 
home. God knows that next to peace for our afflicted country, 
the fondest wish of my heart is to be once more with the loved 
ones who, as you truly say, once made my home so happy. But 
we can never meet on the soil of our native land, at least during 
the continuance of this unhappy war; nor shall we ever, save on 
some blessed spot where waves that proud emblem of protecting 
power, the Stars and Stripes. 

All considerations of mere personal safety aside, the conditions 
on which I am advised I may return to Virginia and be safe, are 
totally inadmissible. 

Those conditions are, first, that I go by flag of truce to Nor- 
folk, and there obtain from Gen. Huger a guard of protection ; 
secondly, that under that guard I proceed to Richmond, and there 
take the oath of allegiance to Virginia before Gov. Letcher; and 
thirdly, that I also take there before President Davis the oath of 
allegiance to the Confederate States of America. 

I regret that I find it impossible to comply with these hard 
terras. I can accept no guard from Gen. Huger, nor from any 
one else who dares, in the land of Washington and Henry, uplift 
the flag of the Confederate States. When I tread the soil of 
Virginia, I must tread it free as the air I quaft', with no guard to 
make me feel the humiliation of a craven slave, with "none to 
make me afraid." 

Still less can I submit to the humiliation of taking the oath of 



allegiance to the land of n,y birtl,. Theve is no need that I should ■ 
I have never been disloyal to my State, no, never. I have bui 
obeyed ker highest la,v. She ,nade theConsJitn.ion of th United 
Staesapartof herown State constitution, and she prescribed 
that great master-piece of human wisdom ,o me as a ru o my 

S^at •:":''• " -t, ^'" """■"''°" '"° ™^ "- '«^«- -I ' 
thatfhelnv r '""'''■^'""■'^^'' l™^-'^'°- '-'^ fi-t, 

o the 1 „d, "any thing ,„ her own State constitution or laws to 
be contrary notwithstanding;" secondly, that it should not be 
,n any respect changed except by the consent of three-fourths of 
tL Tr\-!l ^ ^O"™"'!"" or legislative body assembled, 

lie first of these provisions is too pluiu to bo misconstrnod. 
It tells me, in terms so plain that school-children may undcr- 
s and, that u, a conflict between the Con,,titution and laws of , ^ 
Umted States on the one hand, and those of my State ou the 
other, I must give up the latter and stand by the former. This 
.3 just what I am doing. I am obeying my State's commands • 
I am standing by that higher law which she herself Uid down for 
my guide, and disobedience to which is double disloyalty-di, 
loyalty to her, and disloyalty to the government of the Union 
which she in the plenitude of her power, bade me regard as su! 
preme. Wherein then, have I been disloyal to my srate ? She 
had the undoubted right to issue to me her commands : am I dis- 
loyal to her when I e.wcute those commands to the letter ' 

The second provision quoted is not less explicit. That Consti 
tution which my State prescribed to me as a supreme rule, is not 
to be altered, as she herself stipulated, except by the assent of 
three-fourtlLS of all her sister States. Is not thi^ provision as 
mneh prescribed to me, and as binding „„ ,„e, as anv other' 
Did not my State, when she gave me this new rule, ord'er me to 
guide myself by It; to cling to it ; to stan.i hv it und up to it 
unhl It should be altered by three-fourths of all'tbe States » Was 
It not to remain a supreme rule, until thus altered ' ' ' 

This inquiry then, only arises: Has the Constitution been 
changed by a three-fourths majority ? It has not. What then ' 
Why this, surely : that not having been altered in the only mode 
.n which It can be legally altered, it is binding, in its Original 



form^ with agreed amenclments, upon my State, and upon eacli 
and every State, and upon each and every citizen of every State 
that was living under the Union at the time of its formation, and 
that has lived under its blessed jurisdiction since. And it will 
continue to he so binding, until the form of the instrument 
shall have been changed in the only constitutional mode pre- 
scribed. 

These two manifest provisions, then, of the Federal Constitu- 
tion, stamp supremacy upon the Government and laws of the 
Union, as visibly as the foot-print is impressed on the fresh-fallen 
snow. 

If these positions be well taken, it follows, as the shadow the 
substance, that if I obey an order of my State to give up and no 
longer acknowledge the authority of the Federal Government, I 
allow myself to be made a rebel of, and if I take up arms against 
it, or sive its enemies aid and comfort, a traitor. My State, I de- 
vontly believe, and solemnly protest, has no such prerogative. 
With all her broad province of authority, she wants the power 
to make of me a rebel or a traitor, against ray consent. At all 
events, as I, individually, am to be held responsible, and by an 
all-powerful government, and as, in a case of personal treason, 
my neck, and not my State's, is to feel the halter's throttle, I have 
thought myself free to keep on safety's side. 

But I am told that my State, as a sovereign State, has the legal 
ridit to secede: in other words, to break up the Union at her 
pleasure ; and that all true and patriotic Virginians are bound to 
follow her, and will follow her, no matter whither. 

This doctrine, so flattering to State pride, I confess I have not 
been altogether averse to falling into— a thing not very u)inatu- 
ral in a political community in which the Resolutions of '98, with 
extreme interpretation, alone light the pathway of political aspi- 
rants; but it never had from me that assent which is founded in 
deliberate investigation, and honest conviction. Not until this 
startling issue of the life or death of the government came upon 
•us, did I discharge the solemn duty to my country of considering, 
in all its aspects and consequences, this doctrine of separate State 
secession. I have now examined it fully, and with the sole view 
of learning where duty pointed me; and I have reached a con- 



victioriunobsoured by the shadow ofasinMo doubt tbnt „. y. 
eolfrmeZ- ,,f ' ''^7V"-«""ional power to release ber- 

/ t>^"r.'^ 1^ ncara tor its requium. 

o^ed tbe,.e bas bee,, ., ,„. ,,3. ,.0 ^rL:^^^: Z 

the iihiIosophe,-'s stone. Viro-i,,ia n= „ St„f.. . 

wa,-, „o,. ,.aise a„ a,™,, „„,. „,•,:;;, ^ ,1' f,-':^': 'f"^' 
cent or a silver di„,e, nor establish a post office , or .,' ,,''": 
orexpo,-t<luty, nor make bank notes a lee" ,e', X., '"', 

the habeas co,-pus, norabolish the tilth ' '""1"'"' 

tablished religion nor nakeV en ''"7' ""'""'"" "" ^■•^- 

Bovereio-n nrercx^ativcs • anrl Z ^"'"^''"^ ^ «'".^1« o"e of these 

^ 1 i^iu^acncb, and, therefore, do State affpr if Ko^' 
u member of the Union, can be siul to h. '^'"^ 

tl-n, that the ri.ht of ;ece: io . e.^ ItrflT:'" '"^^^ "^'' 
the States a,ualit, which no separJleS^— I!^?:!':' 
surcLty no less patent than that which supposes the F de .1 G v" 
ernment and that of the senantP Sfnf.. f i , ^'*' 

t..e same sphere. The ^:;:u:':^^':;t:Z""'' T"'"" 
without heading is, of capacity to hold wate,. " " '"™' 



But it is strenuously urged upon me, that when a State acts 
through a convention, her action then becomes the action of a 
sovereign State, and that my State, having in convention deter- 
mined to secede, I and all her sons should follow in her track. I 
cannot recognise this logic. Undoubtedly, the action of a State, 
in convention, within the sphere of unquestioned authority, is the 
highest form her political action can assume. But if a thino- is 
wrong under the higher law of the Federal Constitution, can a 
State make it right by doing it through the medium of a conven- 
tion ? Does the formality of a convention, any more than simple 
legislative proceeding, legalize that which is illegal ? The Con- 
stitution says the laws of the Union shall be supreme: does the 
simple act of going into separate convention destroy that supre- 
macy? The Constitution declares that not one of its provisions 
shall be changed, exceptby the concurrent assent of three-fourths 
of the States: does a State, by acting in convention, acquire the 
power, of itself, to change it? The constitution provides expressly 
that no State shall enter into any confederation or alliance: does 
the fixct, that the Southern Confederacy was formed by the action 
of separate State conventions, invest that grand usurpation with 
constitutionality, and relieve the actors who set it up of the sin 
and wickedness of a deliberate infraction of an instrument, which 
they had in better times acknowledged to confer supreme author- 
ity, and which they had covenanted never to vary but by consul- 
tation with all the States, and the express sanction of a three- 
fourths majority of all ? A State cannot declare war: can it 
acquire that forbidden power by seizing it in convention ? Logi- 
call}', the doctrine is absurd; and it is no better in morality: for 
it makes lawful, by a cheap and easy process, what was unlawful 
before; and, carried out, it negatives altogether the existence of 
a Confederated Government, and would make every Government 
of a Confederation but another name for anarchy, disruption, and 
revolution. 

The naked truth is, then, that each State, the moment it as- 
sented to a Constitution which refers all matters of amendment 
to the tribunal of three-fourths of the States, renounced forever 
all right of separate secession, and in every form, whether of con- 
vention, or of ordinary legislation, or of direct vote of the people. 



8 

The renunciation was absolute and unconditional, without any 
limitation, qualification, or reservation. 

This is the common sense view which entirely satisfies my con- 
science as to the ].osition I have taken ; but I am not a little com- 
forted-in the midst of the contumely which my course has pro- 
voked at home-that it is sustained bv the most eminent of iState- 
r.-hts authorities. Patriek Henry, the leadin- and most eloquent 
adversary of the Federal Constitution because of what he regarded 
Its consolidation tendencies, early rebuked the idea of separate 
State secession. In the Virginia Convention, called in 1788, to 
consider the Federal Constitution, he said : 

«' Have they said, We the States? Have they made a proposal of a compact between 
State,? If they hud, this would be a Confederation : it is otherwise most clearly a 
cansohdated Government. The whole question turns, sir, upon that poor little thine 
the expression We, the people, instead of Me Slates, of America." 

And so, on the Hustings, in the county of Charlotte, lament- 
ing the adoption by the Legislature of his State of the Resolu- 
tions of '98 as tending to Rebellion and Treason, he declared: 

"That the State had quitted the sphere in which she had been placed by the Con- 
sUtution; and m daring to pronounce upon the validity of Federal laws, had gone 
out of her jurisdiction in a n^anner not warranted by any author! tv, and in the highen 
degree alarming to every considerate man ; that such opposition'on the part of Vir 
g.n.a to the acts of the General Government, must beget their enforcement by military 
power ; that this would probably produce civil war ; civil war, foreign alliances ; and 
foreign alliances must necessarily end in subjugation to the powers called in." 

How Strangely and mournfully prophetic! 

And on the same occasion, he put the whole doctrine of seces- 
sion in a nutshell, and reduced it to a thrice-palpable absurdity by 
inquiring — *' ^ 

" Whether the eor^nly of Charlotte u-ould have authority to dispute an obedience to the 
5l ta!7D '^^^^"""^^^'^ ^ "•^'"'■« '^ '^ '^ '^^ ^^--- -/-^ ^^e county of Char- 

Mr. Jefferson, while the Virginia convention of 1788 was in 
session complimented that admirable provision of the Federal 
Constitution (then under consideration in his State) which se- 
cured the peaceable recourse to a convention of the States At a 
ater day he said that, in the event of serious differences between 
the Federal Government and a State or States, ^^which could 
neither be avoided nor compromued, a Convention of the States must 



9 

be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they 
may think best.'' 

John Taylor, oT Caroline, the strictest State-rights politician 
Virginia ever rea.'ed, declared that — 

" The supremacy over ihe Constitution was deposited in three-fourths of the States." 

That provision lie denominated as one — 

" For settl/iif/ collisiojis between the State and Federal Government amicably, and for avoid- 
ing danf/croiis sectional conflicts.'" 

In 1833, Mr. Cjahoun said: 

"There is provided r. power even over the Constitution itself, vested in three-fourths 
of the States, wliich Congress has tlie authority to invoke, and may terminate all con- 
troversies in reference to tke subject, by granting or withholding the right in contest. Its au- 
thority is acknowledged by all, and to denj- or resist it would be, on the part of the 
State, a violation of the co7istilutional compact, and a dissolution of the political associ- 
ation, as fur as it is concerned. This is the ultimate and highest power, and the basis on 
tchich the whole system rests.'' 

He even d.eclared it to be the dntj of the Federal Government to — 

"Suppress physical force as an element of change.'' 

And again, in 1843, when Secretary of State: 

" Should the General Government and a State come into conflict, the power which 
called the General Government into existence, which gave it all its authority, and can 
enlarge, contract, or abolish its powers at its pleasure, may be invoked. The States 
themselves may be appealed to — three-fourths of u-hich form a power whose decrees are 
the Constitution itself , and whose voice can silence all discontent. 

" The utmost extent of tliepower is that a State, acting in its sovereign capacity as one of 
the parties to the constitutional compact, may compel the Government created by that 
compact to submit a qi estion touching the infraction to the parties who created it." 

Mr. Ritchie, the editor of the Richmond Enquirer, who for near 
half a century gave law to the State-rights Democracy of Virginia, 
if not of the Union, wrote, in 1814, as follows: 

''No man, no association of men, no State or set of States has a right to withdraw 
from the Union of its own accord. The same poiver that knit us together can alone unknit. 
The same formality that forged the links of the Union, is necessary to dissolve it. The 
majority of States which form the Union, must consent to the withdrawal of any one 
branch of it. Until that consent has been obtained, any attempt to dissolve the Union, 
or obstruct the efficiency of its Constitutional laws, is treason — treason to all intents 
and purposes." 

This logic of these distinguished representatives of the State- 
rights principle leads directly and irresistibly to this result — it is 
a manifest corollary — that so long as the Constitution of the United 
States remains unchanged by the constitutional majority of three- 
fourths of all the States, no one State has the right to secede: the 
2 



10 

Union constitutionally endures; and, constitutionally enduring, it 
is obligatory, in each and every one of its provisions, on every 
citizen of every State of the Union. 

With this truth stamped upon my understanding so that I could 
not resist it, I have not been able, in conscience, by taking an oath 
of exclusive allegiance to Virginia, to renounce that higher alle- 
giance I owe to the Government of the Union. If I am in error, 
my own State, and her own State-rights teachers, indoctrinated 
me with the error. 

And my conscience is eased yet the more when 1 bring to mind 
the fact, that nearly all the great minds of my State have set me 
the example of repudiating the doctrine, and denouncing it as 
treason. I know but one of the really great men of Virginia, that 
ever fiivored it, and that one was Littleton Waller Tazewell, a 
man, undoubtedly, of extraordinary abilities, but whose great 
powers, like those of Mr. Calhoun, were impaired by a meta- 
physical subtlety illy suited to the deduction of truth, and to suc- 
cessful dealing with the practical concerns of human government. 
Both wanted the practical common sense and well-balanced judg- 
ment which made Henry Clay the greatest statesman of his diay, if 
not of any day or generation. 

Mr. Tazewell did maintain the theory of constitutional separate 
State secession. In a series of articles over the signature of "A 
Virginian," published in the Norfolk Herald, he made for it the 
ablest argument it ever challenged, or that ever will be made for 
it by mortal intellect. But he stands almost "solitary and alone" 
in his glory. Neither Washington, nor Patrick Henry, nor Jefler- 
son, nor Madison, nor Chief Justice Marshall, nor John Taylor, 
nor Spencer Roane, nor William Wirt, nor Philip Doddridge, nor 
Daniel Sheffey, nor Judge Robert B. Taylor, nor Geo. Keith 
Taylor, nor Geo. W. Summers, nor Judge John Scott, nor Judge 
Robert Stanard, nor Robert E. Scott, nor Alexander II. 11. Stuart, 
concurred with him. These authorities will be regarded, I am 
sure, a full ofi'set against the opinion of Mr. Tazewell, and on 
such authorities I am quite content to rest my defence for not 
following my State in her mad plunge into secession. 

But there is one chapter in the political history of Virginia from 
which I must quote, because it contains, for us who could not 



11 

abandon the Federal Union, a vindication which must tell upon 
all reasonable minds, and disarm our revilers. 

In 1808, the Madison electors of Virginia met at a social din- 
ner in Richmond. Judge Spencer Roane, then of the Court of 
Appeals, and the Nestor of the State-rights party of his State, pre- 
sided. The electors came from all parts of the State, and were 
men of eminent ability and unsuspected State-rights republican- 
ism. Some of those who participated were Whigs of the Revo- 
lution, fresh, comparatively, from its battle-fields, and its untaint- 
ed halls of legislation. On this interesting occasion, a certain 
toast — not a volunteer, but a regular one — was drunk. What was 
it? It was nothing more nor less than this : 

" The Union of the States: the majority must govern ; it is treason to secede." 

Now, according to these sentiments of the Madisonian era, am 
I a traitor to my State because I cannot follow her into disunion, 
and ought I to be asked to take to her an oath of exclusive alle- 
giance? 

From another chapter of Virginia histor3% I must quote to set 
right a most remarkable error bearing on our subject. 

The next ablest argument for secession to Mr. Tazewell's, is 
one made some 18 months since by Judge Allen, of the Court of 
Appeals of Virginia, which has done much, more than all others, 
perhaps, to diffuse through the body politic of his State the poison 
of secession. 

But the whole force of his argument rests upon a fallacy, the 
exposure of which utterly annihilates his reasoning. 

The fallacy is this: The Virginia Convention for ratifying the 
Federal Constitution, adopted the following form of ratification : 

"We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, &c., &c., do, in the name and in be- 
half of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the 'powers granted 
under the Constitution, being derived from the j^eople of the United States, may he resumed 
BY THEM whensover the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.' " 

The expression "the people of the United States," is con- 
strued by Judge Allen to mean the people oi the States separately^ 
whereas it is manifest that the people of the States as a Union — 
as a Confederation — as a Government — as a nation — as the people 
of so many States as formed the Union, and could lawfully change it, 
were meant. For the powers granted under the Constitution 



12 

were not granted by a single, separate State, h^it hy a given num- 
ber of States. Not one State, nor two States, could grant the 
powers, and if any one State — to illustrate the absurdity of the 
theory — could resume the granted powers, any other one State 
could do the like, and so the Federal Government, though de- 
signed to "form a more perfect Union," and to "secure the 
blessings of liberty to ourselves and onr posterity," would be the 
merest rope of sand. 

Nobody doubts that the constitutional majority of three-fourths 
of the States may change the form of the Gover iment — may even 
let a particular State out of the Union; but that any one State 
may let itself out, and resume the powers originally granted, not 
by one State, but by a number of States, is altogether a ditferent 
proposition, and one not to be tolerated on any sound theory of 
government, or sound principle of construction. 

But, conceding Judge Allen's theory to be sound, it has no ap- 
plication to the present secession movement ; for he does not 
show, nor has any man yet shown, that the pow3rs granted by the 
people in the Federal Constitution have ever been '''•perverted to 
their injury or oppression.'' 

If 1 travel beyond Virginia, I find abundant accordance with 
the opinions of her own distinguished statesmen. 

In South Carolina — the State that inauguriited the secession 
policy, and that, according to the confessions of her own chief 
public men, has been striving for more than thirty years to sever 
the Union — it was held by her Supreme Court that her citizens 
owe primary allegiance to the Government of the United States, 
and a subordinate one to their State. (Case of State vs. Hunt, 2 
Hill's S. C. "Reps., p. 1.) 

In 1833, the State of Delaware, reprehending the mistaken ac- 
tion of South Carolina in attempting a severance of the Union 
on account of the tariff policy, maintained these catholic proposi- 
tions : 

" Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Slate of Delaware in General 
Assembly met, That the Constitution of the United States is not a treaty or compact be- 
tween sovereign States, but a form of go^vernment emanating from, and established by, 
the authority of the people of the United States of America. 

^'Resolced, That the Government of the United States, although one of limited powers 
is Supreme within its sphere, and that thepeople of the Unilea States owe to it an alle- 



giancethat cannot beicilhdrawn, either hy iadividnnls or masses of individuals, withont 
its consent. 

^^ Resolved, That the Supreme Court of the i'nited States is tlie only and proper tri- 
bunal for the settlement, in the lustresoit, of eontroversies in relation to the Consti- 
tution and the laws of Congress." 

Mississippi, too, among the reost rampant and infatuated of tlie 
secession State.s, in 1851, in a convention of her pe()[)le, adopted 
the followino^ resolution : 

^^ Resolved, That, in the opinion of this convention, the asserted right of secession 
from the Cnion, on the pai't of a State or States, is utlerli/ unsanctioned hy the Federal 
Constitution, which was framed to eslablisli, and not to destroy, the Cnion of the 
States." 

General Jackson said, in 1833: 

"Their object is disunion ; but be not deceived bynames — disunion, by armed force, 
is treason." 

Judge Iredell and Gov. Dav.e, of North Carolina, two of her 
most distinguished citizens, and Charles Cottsworth Pinckney, of 
South Ctirolina, hittei-ly disputed the right of secession. 

And Hon. Howell Cohh, in 18r)l, used this language: 

" When asked to concede the riglit of a State to secede at pleasure from tiie Union, 
with or without just cause, we are called upon to admit that the framers of the Con- 
stitution did that which was never done ly any other people possessed of their good 
sense and intelligence— that is, to provide, in the very organization of the Govern- 
ment, for its dissolution. ! iiave no hesitntion is declaring that the convictions of my 
own judgment are well settled, that no such principle was contemplated in the adop- 
tion of our Constitution." 

And to come, lastly, to that highest and most conclusive au- 
thority', to which all good citizens Ixnv in unreluilant acquies- 
cence, the Supreme Court of the T^iiit(>d States htis forever settled 
the unconstitutionality of secession. 

In tlie case of Cohens i-s. Virginia, Chief Justice Marshall, in 
delivering the opinion of the court, ruled as follows: 

"The people made the Conslitntion, and flie people can unmake it. It is the crea- 
ture of their will, and lives only by the r will. But this supreme and irresistible 
power to make or unmake resides in the vhole bod}' of the people, and not in any sub- 
division of them. The attempt of any of the purls to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to 
be repelled by those to ichom the people have iclcgiited their power of repelling it." 

Here, on this hroad, firm ground — the adjudication of the high- 
est judicial trihunal of my country — I stand, and on it, so help me 
God, I mean to stand while 1 live. If I did not stand content on 



14 

this rock of defiant safety, and from its proud summit laugh to 
scorn the impotent lashings of the angry waves beneath, I should 
be unworthy of the blessings of this great, free Government of 
ours; for tlic experience of all the world testifies that, after all, 
the safest reliance for liuman liberty, its most impregnable bul- 
wark, is to 1)0 found ill thejudieial tribunals. Please tell my old 
friends who think me traitor for not going with my State, and 
who wish me to take an oath of allegiance to her, separately, and 
to the Southern Confederacy, collectively, that the Supreme Court 
of the United States, John Marshall being Chief Justice, tell me 
that if I comply I shall do an unconstitutional, unlawful, wicked 
act, and that, therefore, I cannot and will not do it. 

The truth is, our State has been so capricious in her political 
rulinfrs, that her citizens mav well halt before followino; her 
blindly. In 1798, she planted herself on the position that the 
Federal Government should not be resisted except in case of "de- 
liberate, palpable, and dangerous infractions of the Constitution." 
Obeying this her ancient ruling, I cannot go with her into seces- 
sion, for I know of no " deliberate, palpable, and dangerous in- 
fraction" of her constitutional rights. The Federal Government 
has never done her a wrong that I know of, of any kind. In 1849, 
she declared, by legislative resolves, that if Congress should abol- 
ish slavery in the District of Columbia, or interfere with the slave 
trade between the States, or with slavery within the States, or ap- 
ply the Wilmot proviso to the common territovies, she would 
"resist at all hazards and to the last extremity." But not one of 
these things has been done by Congress. And so, in 1851, she 
approved by an unanimous vote of her General Assembly that 
measure of peace and concord, the Compromise of 1850 ; and 
now, alas ! without the commission of any fresh outrage by the 
Federal Government or the people of the north, save the election 
of the man of their choice to the Presidenc}-, she allows herself to 
be dragged over the precipice of disunion ! 

What, in this conflict of her own positions, must I do ? Must 
I be drairgcd along with her? I^To — I cannot: I must, as a 
citizen, judge for myself, and follow whither conscience and 
duty lead. 

Will I, then, never go with my State, as I have been often 



15 

asked by my disunion friends? Are there no circumstances un- 
der which I would have her secede ? Will I be always a sab- 
missionist? 

I answer: there are circumstances under Avhich I would follow 
m}' State "at all hazards and to the last extremity." When she 
is right in her resistance — when she is grievouslj' and insuf- 
ferably' wronged and oppressed — when she is so cleai-ly in the 
right that I can feel conscious that the God of battles vvill be with 
her in her fight — then I will go with her and die for her, but not 
before. 

A certain great man — one of the most distinguished of men — 
clarum et venerahile nomen — a man whom I loved and admired 
while living, and whose memory I fondly reverence — the first 
statesman of his day — among the wisest the world ever saw — the 
noblest, most unselfish, most disinterested, of patriots — whose 
rank was with Madison, and Lowndes, and Canning, and Pitt, 
and Peel, — who was one of the "bright particular" ornaments, 
not of his country on]}', but of the world: a countryman of ours 
answering faithfully this description, once used the following 
language : 

" I have heard with pain and regret a confirmation of the remark I made, that the 
sentiment of disunion is becoming familiar. I hope it is confined to Sonth Carolina. 
I do not regard as my duty what the honorable Senator seems to regard as his. If 
Kentucky to-morrow unfurls the banner of resistance, unjustly, I will never fight un- 
der that banner. I owe a paramount allegiance to the whole Union — a subordinate 
one to my own State. ^Yhen my State is Tight — when she has cause for resistance — when 
tyranny and wrong, and oppression insufferable arise — / will share her fortunes. But if she 
summons me to the battle Ji eld, or to support her in any cause that is unjust against the Union, 
never, never will I engage with her in such a cause." 

The author of these admirable sentiments was the author of 
that other immortal one, "I had rather be right than be Presi- 
dent." — Henry Clay. 

IsTow, when any of my old line, Henry Clay Whig friends at 
home — you were one — should ask when it is that I will go with 
my State, let them be referred to these sentiments of Mr. Clay, 
and from them receive my answer. Let them be told that, in my 
best judgment, the State is not right in taking the part she has in 
secession — "that tyrann}', wrong, and oppression insufferable" 
have not yet arisen — that she has no more cause of complaint 



16 

now tliiui slie bad in 1851, when she virtnnlly endorsed these 
o[iiiiii)iis of the great Kentuckiiui bv apjU'oving and accepting the 
compromise measures of 1850 a& a ''full and tinal settlement of 
all tlie agitating questions to whicli tliey related," and that, ac- 
cordingly, a state of things exists which subordinates the alle- 
giance I owe the State to that higher "paramount allegiance 
which I owe the whole Union." 

But it is urged upon mo, again, that if the secession of the 
Southern States finds no warrant in the Constitution, it has war- 
rant in the law of Kevolution. 

This is a clear change of tlie issue. Xot one of the seceding 
States rested its action on thu right of Kevolution. All appealed 
to the high [iretension that to secede was matter of right — of 
magna charta — of Constitutional privilege — of reserved right, 
overcoming all the express provisions of the National Constitu- 
tion. But change the issue to Kevolution, and a yet flimsier pre- 
text is substituted. 

The right ot Kevolution is not an arbitrarj- thing. It is a prin- 
ciple; and a princi[>le, too, of theutmost consequence in the great 
practical concerns of mankind. Men associated in a society may 
not at v> ill throw oft' its trammels, otherwise the peace of the com- 
munity would never be safe. Disorder, civil commotion, violence, 
bloodshed and war, would stand ever ready for the beckon of the 
vicious and the desperate. Ther3 would be no stability in the 
rights of projjerty, or of any of tin personal rights. There would 
be no repose for innocent and helpless women and children, and 
other non-combatants of society. Society, indeed, would be but 
a series of commotions and desoh.tions. Revolution, then, being 
a principle, wliat is the principle? It is philosophically and beau- 
tifully illustrated in the celebrated lines of Shakespeare, "rather 
endure those ills we have, than tly to others that we know not of," 
and it is this: that existing arrangements ofsociety and government 
are not to be disturbed to the extent of force and war, unless on 
the ground of grievous wrong or intolerable oppression. AVhen 
these arise, it is the great pri\'llegc of man, as it is his great in- 
stinct, to rise up in all his majesty and might, and resist even unto 
war, blood, and death.' 

This being the principle, it h is no application to, and is no 



17 

jui?tification for, the dismemberment of the ITiiion by the se- 
ceded States. 

On tlie day of the Presidential election, in November, 18(30, 
from which period the active movements towards secession 
date, the country was never in a more prosperous condition, or its 
people happier. The effects of the commercial revulsion of 1857 
had almost disappeared under the recuperating agency of boun- 
tiful crops; and peace, plenty, and content, reigned through the 
land. This state of prosperity and repose was disturbed for no 
adequate cause. In my judgment, we have been precipitated into 
civil war. with all its revolting incidents of social and physical 
desolation, witliout miy cause at all. I lament to say it ; but it is 
true, that this whole secession movement is nothing more nor less 
than downright rebellion, and rebellion against the best and the 
most parental Government that ever a people had. 

In Virginia, it is complained that great outrages have been 
committed on southern rights. By whom ? Certainly not by the 
Federal Government, of whose action alone is there any danger. 
If any outrages have been perpetrated, what are they ? I know 
them not; no, not one. I frequentlj' appealed to the leading se- 
cessionists of Virginia, while there, both in public and private, in 
the legislative halls, on the hustings, at the cross-streets and the 
cross-roads, to name to me one wrong which the Government 
thev were so anxious to subvert, had ever done the south, and I 
was never answered by any specification. I heard, ever and anon, 
some indefinite grumbling about the Wilmot Proviso, and Per- 
sonal Liberty laws, and interference with the rights of slavehold- 
ers ; but I never met the first man who could point his finger to 
the first act of actual aggression by the Federal Government upon 
the rights of the south. 

So far from the commission of any positive aggression, I must 
say, and do say, that the course of the Federal Government — of 
Congress, the only practical representative of that Government 
and the people — has been everything the south could ask. First, 
on the demand of the south, Congress enacted, not one, but two 
fuaitive slave laws. The first did not suit, and a better one was 
asked for and obtained. The south assented, almost unanimously, 
to the Missouri Compromise ; but, becoming dissatisfied with it, 
3 



18 

asked for the obliteration of the geographical line between slavery 
and freedom, and Congress hearkened to the demand, the pecu- 
liar northern friends of the south, in Congress and out of it, sus- 
taining the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The south pro- 
tested against the application of the W'ilniot Proviso to the com- 
mon territories, and Congress listened. Xo hnv apijljing the 
Wilraot proviso has been enacted. On the contrary-, several ter- 
ritorial laws, embracing the whole disposable territory of the Uni- 
ted States, have been passed, which .contained no prohibition as 
to slavery. And now any citizen is free to go to any of the terri- 
tories with his slaves, if he chooses, unmolested by any action of 
the Federal Government, and with all the protection open to him 
which the courts can give to his rights of property. The south 
complained of the Personal Liberty statutes of the north, for 
which the Federal Government is not responsible; and yet what 
did Congress do, in tliis regard ? To (piiet the apprehensions of 
the southern- people, and to preserve the national quiet, it did all 
it could do — it i^assed hy a vote of 151 to 14 — almost unanimous — 
a rholution, recommending to the northern States the repeal of their 
Personal Liberty latvs ; and there can be no doubt, that if the 
south had not precipitated itself into secession, this patriotic and 
friendly recommendation of the people's representatives would 
have had its effect in the repeal of most, if not all, the oifen- 
sive statutes. The south expressed its apprehension — for which 
there never Avas any just ground — that slaverj' in the States would 
be assailed, and said new guarantees were wanted, wdien Con- 
gress, by a vote almost unanimous, adopted the following resolu- 
tions : 

'• Resolved, Tluil neither the Federal Goveninienl nor the people or governments of 
the noii-slaveholding States have a purpose or a constitutional right to legislate upon, 
or interfere with, slavery in any of the Stales of the Union. 

Resolved, That those persons in the north who do not subscribe to the foregoing 
proposition are too insignificant in numbers and influence to excite the serious atten- 
tion or alarm of any portion of the people of the Republic, and that the increase of 
their numbers and inlhience does not kec]) jiace with the increase of the aggregate 
population of the Union." 

It went still further — did all that any reasonable man in the 
south could have asked : by the necessary constitutional majority, 
it recommended to the States the adoption of an amendment to the 



19 

Constitution (proposed, I think, by Mr. Seward) which should for- 
ever forbid the interference hy Congress with slavery in the States. 
[This proposition was voted a-^ainst by Mr. Toombs and Mr. 
Davis.] And when John Brown's invasion of Virginia was de- 
nonnced as a great outrage, to prevent the repetition of the like 
raids, it was proposed in the Senate Compromise Committee, by 
Mr. Seward, to pass a hiw to punish all persons hereafter making 
such invasion, and though voted for by all the northern members 
of the committee, the proposition failed for want of the co-opera- 
tion of the southern members. 

As to the absorbing matter of slavery, then, let us see how the case 
stands, or how it might have stood, had the seceding States been 
a little more patient. The proposed amendment to prohibit for- 
ever all interference with slavery, had been, early after the election 
of Mr. Lincoln, submitted by Congress to the States. The legis- 
latures of three-fourths of the States, or the people of three-fourths 
of the States in convention, might have adopted it, and thus made 
it a part of the Constitution. Had all the slave States adop- 
ted it, there is no doubt a sufficient number of the free States 
would have co-operated to secure the constitutional majority of 
three-fourths, and then what would liave been the result? Why, 
that would have been accomplished for which the whole south 
had professed to be so anxious — Slavery in the States ivould have 
been perpetually protected ; the agitation of the long-disturbing ques- 
tion ivould have ceased, except with afeiv demented fanatics ; and the 
concord of former days would have been restored. 

Slavery in the States being thus rendered impregnal)le, there 
would have been nothing left of this subject to disturb the na- 
tional harmony but the territorial question, and that is of no prac- 
tical moment, for there is not a foot of the present Territories that 
is adapted to slave labor, or to which slave labor coidd profit- 
ably go. In New Mexico, for example, five times as laige as New 
York, there are but twenty-six slaves, (who are the body ser- 
vants of Government and Army officers,) though slavery is there 
legal, and protected by a slave code. Of what practical conse- 
quence to the south, then, is the right of carrying slaves to Terri- 
tories from Avhich the God of nature, by His laws of soil and cli- 
mate, and by the instincts He has planted in man, has forever ex- 



20 

eluded them ? And why should the north care to prohibit sla- 
very in Territories, into which, for the inhibitions named, it can 
never be introduced ? 

In fact, all that the south can properly demand in regard to 
slavery in the Territories, as Judge Campbell, late of the Supreme 
Court, contended, is, that the status quo be observed. I quote his 
wise and patriotic words, addressed to the people of Alabama: 

"The great subject of disturbance — that of slavery in the Territories — rests upon a 
satisfactory foundation, and we have nothing to ask, except that the status quo be 
respected." 

Well, the status qtcollA^heen respected — I think, scrupulously 
respected. Notwithstanding the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, whii'h so )nuch and so justly offended northern sensibili- 
ties, anil ill defiance of tlie outside pressure which the repeal of 
that measure of plighted faith and honor generated, Congress has 
not applied the Wilmot Proviso to any of the Territories. It has 
wisely left the matter to tiie laws of God — of soil, production, 
climate, and profit — and to tlie courts, to which the whole subject 
so properly belongs. 

Now, with the promise of perpetual guarantees for slavery in 
the States, and the observance of the status quo as to the Territo- 
ries, what reason was there that Virginia and her deluded sisters 
should have seceded from our blessed Union ? 

I thought, as I still think, that all the slave States should hav.e 
submitted the ameijdment of the Constitution forbidding future 
interference with slavery in the States, to their Legislatures or 
people, and obtained in that way the security desired for their 
peculiar institution. Then, instead of the civil war whose demon 
howl now rings through the land, and whose desolation is carried 
to the hearth, and the fire-side, and every relation and interest of 
life, we should have continued to realize that peace and happiness, 
which, under our glorious institutions, have blessed us above all 
the people of the earth. Oh ! what a chance did we lose of 
saving our country and ourselves ! How mad was it, with so 
cheering a prospect for the happy solution of all our difficulties, 
to plunge into the gulf of ruin forever ! 

And why, let me ask, did we not make the efibrt for peace and 
salvation ? Alas ! I fear there was a foregone conclusion to destroy 



21 

the Uuion, without regard to wrongs, or the remedies for them ! 
What does the refusal of the south to accept Mr, Seward's amend- 
ment indicate hut that no compromise was desired, and that dis- 
union was resolved on, under any and all circumstances? Why 
was not the north met half-way, in proposals for peace and guar- 
antees ? 

And, at the time of Mr. Lincohi's election, what semblance of 
danger was there to the south? There was a clear opposition 
majority of 21 in the House of Representatives, and a conclusive 
one in the Senate. How, under such circumstances, could the 
south have been harmed ? Could slavery have been abolished 
in the District of Columbia? Could it have been prohibited in 
the Territories? Could it have been touched in the States? Was 
it possible that Mr. Lincoln could have harmed the south a hair's 
breadth, even had he the disposition ? 

Besides having both branches of Congress on its side, had not 
the south the Supreme Court? Had not the decisions of that 
high tribunal leaned to the side of slavery and slave holders? 
And had not Congress, in the several territorial laws, referred all 
rights of property — slave and other — to that august and trust- 
worthy tribunal ? 

Then, tlie fact is simply this : that with an entire absence of 
all aggressive legislation, the south had the Legislature and Judi- 
ciary to itself. Onl}^ the Executive was against it, or was sup- 
posed to be against it, and that branch w^as impotent for harm, 
because an inimical measure could never reach it. The south, 
indeed, had every thing its own way, was as impregnable as a 
well-equipped army behind a strong entrenchment would be from 
the outside assaults of a few ragged regiments, armed with pop 
guns — and yet the south, with horse-leech aviditj-, cried ; " Give 
us more, or we will dash the Union into fragments ! " 

Surely the history of mankind ailbrds no parallel to this re- 
markable infatuation I It stands alone. There has never been 
before so impious a defiance of the goodness of the Creator — such 
a sporting with the beneficence of Providence — so mad a case of 
self-ruin and self-destruction ! 

My own deep belief is, that those who busied themselves in 
this great wickedness, will never be able to account to the Chris- 



90 



tian world for their participation in it. ITow I thank God that I 
have had no part nor lot in the matter! And as each sand of the 
unhappy conflict runs out, the more thankful am I, that I had the 
iirmncss to repudiate and reject all the projects of the secessionists! 

The proposition so often suhniittcd to me that Mr. Lincoln's 
election is adequate tause for a dissolution of the Union, I look 
upon with ahsolute horror. The doctrine that the election by a 
legal majority of the people of the President of their choice is a 
sufficient reason for the dissolution ofthe Union, is so monstrous, so 
antagonisticul to all t"he theory and maxims of popular and Repub- 
lican Government, so replete with radicalism and lawlessness, so 
perilous to all the vested interests of society, so fraught with 
moral and social chaos and ruin, so barbarous, that I dismiss it, 
once and forever, with my utter and eternal abhorrence. I will 
not even quote against it the authority of the great men of the 
south, of all parties, who have repudiated the detestable heresy. 
Its own blackness is its own best exponent! 

And the folly of secession — of resorting to the cartridge-box in- 
stead ofthe ballot-box, for redress — is more apparent siill, when 
we look at the presidential vote of 1860. 

The whole opposition vote was 2,804,000; the Republican vote 
1,857,000: majority against the Republicans, nearly a million. 
I^ow, with this million conservative pro-southern majority, would 
it not have been far wiser (as I argued on another occasion) to 
have made another trial of strength before throwing aside the 
best Government the world ever saw? Is uot a quiet victory at 
the polls preferable to a revolution, in which the sword must de- 
cide the issue? Should we have precipitated disunion by four 
years for a danger which was that length of time distant, at least, 
and which, by the end of that period, might have vanished alto- 
gether, by a change in the political sentiment of the country? 
Should we, for an imaginary peril, have taken disunion four whole 
years by the forelock? Was the Union of so little value that. we 
should absolutely have made haste to destroy it — to kill it off be- 
fore its time had come? 

To the idea that the election of Mr, Lincoln evinced a section- 
alism and hostility at the north, which would endanger the insti- 
tution of slavery, it is suflicient to reply that the facts show it to 
be utterly unsound. 



23 

In a Union Address to my Tate constituents, published in Janu- 
ary, 1861, I used the followins; laiiijuasre: 

" Perlinps, no presidential vote was ever cast that was more complex in its charac- 
ter than that which was cast in November last. There were scores upon scores of 
thousands, even of the democracy, that were bitter in their hostility to Mr. Buchan- 
an's Administration. Large numbers regarded it as corrupt ; tor corruption had been 
charged from high democratic sources. Plou. Roger A. I'ryor was among the 
foremost in this denunciation. The Lecompton policy had lost to the Admin- 
istration, and driven over to the Republican ranks, an army of its former friends. 
The linuncial policy of the Government, based on constant loans and issues of treas- 
ury notes, instead of duties on imports under a properly regulated tariff, turned the 
attention of a large number of people of the north to a change of Administration. 
Pennsylvania, always conservative until, desperate for the proper governmental ap- 
preciation of her material interests, she was compelled to take sides with the candi- 
date most likely to succeed, (who was undoubtedly Mr. Lincoln,) cast her vote, mainly, 
on the tariff question. Now, all these classes of voters, numbering, it must be, several 
hundreds of thousands, desired a change of administration, and very naturally looked 
to the most available nominee, and regarding Mr. Lincoln, in consequence of the 
hopeless divisions of the democracy, as that most available nominee, cast their votes 
for him, without meaning to endorse his peculiar views on the subject of slavery. 
Disunion, then, on the idea of an irreconcilable northern enmity to southern institu- 
tions, rests upon an assumption unsound, unsubstantial, and suicidal." 

And tlius is annihilated another favorite pretext of the dis- 
unionists. 

As for the Personal Liberty laws, no one ever lost a slave by 
them. Mostl}', they are mere anti-kidnapping statutes, and 
whether constitutional or not, the}' should be to the south 
matter of inditierence. Nor have all the free States passed such 
laws. Neither New York, nor Ohio, nor Minnesota, nor Iowa, 
nor Illinois, nor Indiana, nor New Jersej', has one. In Indiana 
and Illinois, slaves are arrested without process and returned to 
their masters. The wives of Kentuckians o^o into those States on 
social visits, with their colored domestics, unattended by their 
husbands. These facts I have heretofore publicly stated, on the 
authority of letters addressed to nn'self by Hon. Robert Mallory 
and W. R. Kinney, esq., of Kentucky, who reside on or near the 
Ohio river. Illinois has a statute which allows slaves to stay with 
their masters sixty days within her territory; and New Jersey not 
only allows the transit of slaves with their masters, but has a fu- 
gitive slave law of her own, to aid in the execution of the Federal 
law of the same kind. But should we, for these practically harm- 
less personal liberty statutes, destroy our glorious Union? I would 



24 

not, if overv northern statute book were lialf filled with them. No: 
I will stand yet by the Union of our fatliers, trusting tliat the 
"sober second thought," and the prevalence of tliat feeling which, 
"in the times that tried men's souls," put Massachusetts "shoul- 
der to shoulder" witli Virginia, will strike from the statute books 
all these irritating enactments, believing as well as hoping, that 
the patriotic recommendation of the representatives of the people 
in the House of Commons of the nation, already referred to, will 
lead to that "consummation so devoutlv to be wished." Some 
oftlioui, indeed, have already been repealed. 

liut are we of the south ourselves without reproach in the mat- 
ter of the enactment of offensive laws ? I regret to say, and I say 
it with a sense of shame, that the law of South Carolina in re- 
gard to colored seamen — tlie State that stands in the front rank, 
and tliat is the cuiltiest of the ti-uilty in this enormous wicked- 
uess of secession — is just as offensive, as violative of the great 
principles of civil lil)erty, as repugnant to the spirit and the letter 
of our Constitution, as the worst personal liberty' law of the 
northern States. The constitutionality of this law South Carolina 
would not allow even to be considered in her courts, though 
Massachusetts deputed thither one of her most distinguished ju- 
rists, [Judge Hoar,] to test its validity. 

For one, I act in this matter on the law of offset. Both sec- 
tions have done wrong, and I let the misdoing of the one stand 
against the misdoing of the other, and let the Union rise up in 
all its lustrous glory between both, to rebuke the sectional spirit 
that would stand between it; and the accomplishment of the grand 
destiny of popular institutions in America. 

With regard to the Fugitive Slave law — that fruitful source of 
agitation both north and south, and I might add of misappre- 
hension — it is enough to say that it has been executed, with all 
reasonable fidelity and success. The idea generally prevailing in 
the south that the law was never executed, and fugitive slaves never 
returned, is entirely erroneous. Many are quietly surrendered 
whose cases are never heard of; only those cases reach the pub- 
lic in which there is some tumult, or in those rare instances in 
which wicked people resist the execution of the law, and which, 
therefore, make a noise in the newspapers, and furnish material 



25 

for declamation on the stump, and in the bar-rooms. These latter 
instances are the exceptions, not the general rule. But for the te- 
diousness of the detail, I could furnish almost a volume of exam- 
ples of the successful execution of the law. The grand jury of the 
northern district of Ohio indicted seven persons for resisting the 
marshal, and I believe they were all found guilty, and punished 
with fine and imprisonment. A clergyman was convicted in 
Ohio of the same offense, and sentenced to an imprisonment of 
six months, and a fine of $1,500. There are several persons now 
in jail at Chicago who were convicted in an Illinois court by an 
Illinois jury for assisting in the rescue of a fugitive slave, and 
who were fined $1,500 each, for the non-payment of which they 
are now suffering the pains of a dreary imprisonment. Less than 
a year ago I remember that several slaves were arrested in Cincin- 
nati, and quietly restored to their masters ; and a journal of that 
city declared at the time, that "during the preceding three years 
not a colored pei'son arrested on a warrant of a United States 
commissioner, had been set free or escaped." Judge Douglas de- 
clared in the Senate that Judge McLean had always executed the 
law with scrupulous fidelity. The Supreme Court of Massachu- 
setts, consisting of five Republican judges, unanimously pro- 
nounced the fugitive slave law constitutional, and " binding on 
the people of Massachusetts." Since the election of Mr. Lincoln, 
several fugitives were arrested in Chicago, examined before a 
United States' commissioner at Springfield, and remanded to their 
owners in St. Louis; and since this arrest and rendition, it is 
well known that large numbers of fugitive slaves, finding that the 
law is to be enforced under the present as under past administra- 
tions, have been flocking to Canada for an asylum ; and even 
since the secession of the southern States, fugitives have been 
peaceably arrested in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and delivered 
to their owners. 

I deal with this subject practically, and on this point I quote 
again from the address already referred to : 

"The question, then, comes up, (which I have well weighed and considered,) is 
there enough of grievance and of wrong in these personal liberty laws to induce dis- 
ruption? Ought M'e, can we, for these dead statutes, .-ind a few exceptional cases of 
escapes of fugitive slaves, forego the priceless, incalculable benefits of a Union which 
was the handiwork of Washington, and Franklin, and Madison, and Gerry, and Robert 
4 



26 

Morris, and Governeur Morris, luid Laurens, and Pinckney, and Hamilton, and which 
has made the people of the United States the freest, the happiest, and the greatest na- 
tion on the p^lohe? If we do, the madness and the folly of the deed will be without a 
parallel in the annals of human weakness and folly. 

" And another great, practical inquiry for the Southern slaveholder, is, will secession 
remedy or alleviate this evil of the escape of his slaves? No : it will aggravate the griev- 
ance a thousand fold. The Union dissolved, and with its dissolution the fugitive- 
slave law gone; the obligation for the surrender of fugitive slaves cancelled; with 
more than a million and a half of friends turned into foes; with the fierce animosities 
and implacable enmities which have ever attended the disruption of once friendly 
and confederated States; with none, either in law or friendship, to intercept the fu- 
gitive in his flight to his great asylum in Canada; with Canada brought down to the 
very border line of the border slave States, so that the under-ground railroad will no 
longer be needed, and slaves have but to cross a boundary to be free : I say, in this 
state of things, under the mistaken policy of secession, we shall lose one hundred, per- 
haps one thousand slaves where we now lose one; our slave property will be worth- 
less; and the border slave States, however reluctantly, will be driven, 'dragged' to 
general emancipation, or to a ruinous sacrifice, perhaps utter loss, of their slave prop- 
erty. What will a slave be worth in Virginia, or Maryland, or Kentucky, or Missouri" 
when, to obtain his freedom, he has but to cross a river or a line? 

"Then if we value our slave property, and would hinder the escape of our slaves 
into the free States, we had better adhere to the Union. In that Union, and there 
only, lies the safety of the Southern slaveholder." 

Oil ! had we not better have lost twice or thrice as many of our 
slaves as we usually have, than to have given up the peace, and 
quiet, and domestic happiness, and material comfort which we 
all enjoyed under the Union of our fathers ? Is the loss of a few 
slaves to the south to be put in computation with that loss of so- 
cial happiness, and sacrifice of property and matei-ial prosperity ; 
with the desolated hearths and ruined homes; with the untold 
agony of heart and the millions of crushed hopes, and the count- 
less suflerings of the innocent and helpless; with the distrust, 
hate, and alienation, that have followed in the track of this great 
delusion of secession? Before God and man I say it, I would 
have preferred to have had the loss of fugitive slaves quadrupled, 
yea, quintupled, rather than to have had taken from me the ines- 
timable blessings of the Union. 

And, after all, has not the loss by the escape of our slaves 
been greatly overrated ? Mr. Everett showed in his address at 
the Academy of Music in New York, and from the census re- 
turns, that, in 1850, the number of fugitive slaves from all the 
slave States was only f, of one per cent., and that in 1860 it was 



27 

only /o of one per cent. — a loss, too insignificant to be thought 
of, in comparison with the priceless blessings of the Union ! The 
loss to the drovers of cattle in Virginia, in every drive, is gene- 
rally about 10 per cent, while to owners of slaves, by escapes, it 
is only J^ of one per cent., and I do not doubt that the annual 
loss to the drovers of the State in getting their cattle to market, 
is of larger pecuniary amount than that of all the slaveholders of 
the State by the escape of fugitive slaves. 

At all events, it is an unfortunate period to dissolve the Union on 
account of the loss of fugitive slaves, for the ratio of loss is regularly 
diminishing under the more efficientfugitive slave law of 1850, and 
an improved public sentiment, and, doubtless, it would have con- 
tinued to diminish. B}' the census of I860, it appears that in the 
border slave States one slave escaped to every 2,527, and in 1860, 
one to every 3,276; or, by Mr. Everett's figures, ^^ of one per 
cent, in 1850, and ^V of one per cent, in 1860 — a result which 
demonstrates that the people of the south were gradually, but 
surel}', acquiring additional security for their peculiar property. 

A few most remarkable results exhibited by the census returns, 
and I have done with this branch of the subject. I find that in 
1860, Texas lost 16 slaves — one in every 11,274; Alabama 36 — 
one in every 12,087; Florida 11 — one in every 5,614; Georgia 
23 — one in every 20,096; Louisiana 46 — one in every 7,228; and 
South Carolina 23 — one in every 17,501; — while the border States 
lost as follows: Virginia one in every 4,195; Missouri one in 
every 1,161; Kentucky one in every 1,895; and Maryland one in 
every 758! These statistics show that, so far as fugitive slaves 
and fugitive slave laws are concerned, the cotton States have far 
too insignificant an interest to excuse them for trifling, as they 
have done, with the Union, and the interests of the border States. 
Think of it — Georgia losing only one slave in every 20,096, drag- 
ging Virginia out of the Union, who loses one in every 4,195; and 
South Carolina, losing one in every 17,501, dragging out Mary- 
land, who loses one in every 758, and Kentucky, who loses one 
in every 1,895! Virginians lost their manhood when they sub- 
mitted to be thus dragged. I cannot be one of the dragged. 

And how mournfully do these statistics illustrate, to slave- 
holders, the consequences of secession ! 



•28 

Florida loses, in a year, eleven slaves; value, at $600 each, 
$6,600. Lest she incur a loss, by escaping slaves, of $6,600 a 
year, she gives up a Government which had expended one hun- 
dred millions in her behalf, and encounters a debt greater than 
the value of all her slaves tocrether! 

Texas loses 16 slaves; value, $9,600. For this insignificant 
loss, she sacrifices the priceless benefits of a Union to which she 
owes her very existence as a State, and under whose benign aus- 
pices she has advanced, with unexampled pace, to prosperity and 
consequence ! 

South Carolina and Georgia lose each 23 slaves, per year; value 
to each, $13,600. For this paltry sum — not the worth of a re- 
spectable mansion-house in Charleston or Savannah — each 
looses herself from a Government under which her peculiar in- 
dustry prospered to the amount, annually, of hundreds of millions 
of dollars, and against which neither can truly charge a single 
act of unkindness ! 

But it is with our own State I have chiefly to do. "What has 
secession done for Virginia, in reference to her property in 
slaves ? 

In 1860, she lost 117 slaves. To make the argument alto- 
gether favorable to secession, 1 put the aggregate value down at 
$100,000. Suppose that to be her annual loss under the Union, 
what has she gained by secession? Her share of the Confederate 
debt cannot, up to this date, be less than $60,000,000. On her 
own State account her expenditure cannot be short of $40,000,- 
000 more. If the war continues a year longer (which is next to 
certain) her entire debt, on account of it, must reach at least 150 
millions. 

So that, to save a loss, by fugitive slaves, of $100,000 per an- 
num, she incurs a debt of 150 millions, the annual interest on 
which, at the Virginia rate of 7 per cent., is ten and a half mil- 
lions of dollars! 

That is to say, the people of Virginia, to avoid a loss or tax of 
$100,000 a year, are made to jump into one of ten and a half 
millions a year, an increase from a hundred thousand dollars, 
under secession, to ten and a half millions under the Union, and 
a sum which would pay for the annual loss, by fugitive slaves. 



29 

for one hundred and five years; or which, in the form of yearly 
taxation, would be a blasting incubus upon the whole material 
prosperity of the State for generations to come, and, at the end 
of the war, would induce an utter depopulation of her domain, 
as the only escape from an unendurable taxation ; or, regarding 
this war debt as so much principal, it would pay the annual loss, 
by fugitive slaves, for fifteen hundred years to come ! 

Taking an illustration nearer home, the little county of Eliza- 
beth City — the smallest in the State — has lost, since the opening 
of the rebellion, at least 1,000 slaves, worth, by the usual average, 
$500,000. So that, in the effort of her misguided people to get 
greater security for slave property, they have lost more in six 
months than the whole State has in five, perhaps ten years past. 
I doubt whether this county has lost a thousand dollars' worth of 
fugitive slaves during the last twenty-five years of its existence 
under the Union, while in 200 days of secession's reign, it has lost 
half a million's amount. In this, the county of my residence, 
there were rich farmers who, before secession's inauguration, 
owned large numbers of slaves, but who now have not one left to 
black their boots, or saddle a horse for them. Let these men, the 
very foremost to denounce me for adhering to the LTnion, tell 
me now which works better for their slave property, the blessed 
Union of our wise and good fathers, or that miserable delusion 
and humbug, of modern secession and a Southern Confederacy. 

Yet another home illustration. It may be safely computed 
that the border counties, and those contiguous to the lines of the 
Federal armies, have lost, by escapes, at least 25,000 slaves since 
the rebellion began. The value of these, at $500 each, is $12,- 
500,000. So that the State has lost, in the first six months of 
secession, more slave property than she could have lost in 125 
years of government under the Union, had it existed so long. 

Again: Virginia has, in round numbers, half a million of 
slaves. Before secession came along, slaves were of great value. 
A likely field-hand commanded, readily, from 1,500 to 2,000 dol- 
lars. Good-looking children of seven or eight years' age, were 
worth almost as much as adults. Even old men and women 
brought large prices. It is safe to put the average value at $700 
per head, which gives a total value of $350,000,000. And it is 



30 

certainly safe to estimate the depreciation at one half each. So 
that, to escape the small annual loss of $100,000, our State 
rushes, by the path of secession, into an almost instant loss of 
one hundred and seventy-five millions ! 

Or, to illustrate for the whole Southern Confederacy, take the 
whole number of fugitive slaves in all the seceded States to- 
gether. That number, according to the census of 1860, was only 
458; value, at rate above, $320,600. The Confederate States' 
debt, contracted by secession, cannot be less than 500 millions of 
dollars. Then the seceded States, in order to shun an annual 
loss of $320,600, find themselves involved, in a twelve month, in 
a consuming debt of five hundred millions — a sura equal to one- 
third the value of all the slaves in all the seceded States to- 
gether. 

Let the account be stated: 

Loss of the seceded States under a year of the Union, 458 
slaves; cash value, $320,600: 

Public debt accruing by reason of secession, and in a single 
year, $500,000,000: 

From the secession debt of $500,000,000 take the Union loss of 
$320,600, and there is a balance in favor of the Union of $499,- 
680,000! This latter sum would have been the saving to the 
seceded States, had they remained in the Union, or, what is the 
same thing, the amount they have lost by going out of the 
Union. 

One more, and the last illustration on this head; and it is one 
that must stamp absurdity and madness on the measure of seces- 
sion forever. 

By the census returns of 1860, it appears that the whole fifteen 
slave States lost, in that year, only 803 fugitive slaves. So eftec- 
tual was the fugitive slave law of 1850, and so kind the spirit of 
the controlling masses at the north, that, in all the slaveholding 
States, only 803 slaves were fugitives in the period of a year. 
What was this loss, divided among fifteen States? At $500 each, 
it was only $401,500; at $700 each, it was only $562,500; at 
$1,000 each, it was only $803,100. Now, I ask, can any sane, 
practical, common-sense man, for either of these sums, give in 
exchange the priceless and countless blessings and glories of a 



31 

Union which sent protection, security, peace, quiet, plenty, glad- 
ness, and joy, to the hearths and fire-sides of every American citizen, 
north and south, east and west, wherever born or wherever living? 
Compared with this protection, and security, and peace, and 
quiet, and plenty, and gladness, and joy, how inexpressibly paltry 
are the eight hundred and three thousand one hundred dollars of 
loss b}' runaway slaves! For such a Union — for so vast and 
matchless a good — who.w^ould begrudge so small a premium, 
especially when the price is not extorted from us by wrongful 
authority, or for intentional oppression, but is the inseparable, 
uncontrollable result of the peculiar characteristics and condition 
and relations of the negro race? 

And how much have we hot exaggerated this whole matter of 
our loss of slave property! Only 458 slaves lost, in a year, by 
the eleven seceded, and 803 by the whole fifteen, of the slave- 
holding States! Many people in the south doubtless suppose 
that many thousands annually escape, and put down the southern 
loss at many millions every year, and this mis-information, I doubt 
not — indeed, I know it — has tended greatly to aggravate southern 
sensibility and excitement about slaves and slavery. But the 
census of '60 discloses the fact that, after all the angry dissensions, 
and sectional discord, and revolutionary commotion on account 
of the slavery question, the eleven seceded States lost, in twelve 
months, only 458 fugitive slaves, worth a little more than a 
quarter of a million of dollars, while all the slaveholdiug States to- 
gether lost only 803, worth but about half a million ! 

If the southern mind had been properly informed on the sta- 
tistics of the subject, I cannot believe that the fatal step of seces- 
sion would ever have been ventured. But alas! political agita- 
tion, ambition, selfishness, and passion, have held before the 
people a thick veil which has hid from their vision the truths 
that so deeply concern them ! 

Contemplate the subject, then, in what aspect you will, secession 
has been blast and ruin to the slavery interests of Virginia, and of 
the entire south. 

I do not mean to say that, in reference to existing disturbances, 
the people of the North are wholly faultless. The constant sla- 
very agitation at the North, I concede, is properly offensive to the 



32 

south. It is wrong, and I should be glad to see our northern 
brethren desisting from that which can have no effect but to irri- 
tate, and to weaken the chords that bind us to a common Gov- 
ernment. But we of the south are not altogether without sin in 
the premises, for we ourselves have indulged in the largest lib- 
erty in the discussion of the slavery question, I have ever 
thought, to the detriment of the slaveholding interest, thoucrh 
Senator Hammond and Mr. Stephens, and some other prominent 
southern men assert, that "slavery has been greatly strengthened 
and fortified by agitation," and that "happy results for the south 
have come of the Abolition discussion." If the latter opinion be 
sound, the south had no cause of complaint, and certainly no need 
of upsetting the Union because of the anti-slavery discussion. 
Besides, this anti-slavery discussion has been going on for long 
years past, and if such discussion furnished just cause for a disso* 
lution of the Union, it should have been dissolved long ago. But 
we did not, on this account, proceed to disruption under past 
Administrations. Why should we do it under Mr. Lincoln's? Is 
the anti-slavery agitation any worse under Mr. Lincoln's Admin- 
istration than it was under Mr. Fillmore's, or Mr. Polk's, or Mr. 
Pierce's, or Mr. Buchanan's? 

Verily, I must have far stronger reasons than this for sur- 
rendering the thousand blessings of the American Union. Were 
I to advocate its destruction on so unsubstantial a pretext— for it 
does not rise to the dignity of a reason— I should commit a crime 
against humanity I could never expiate, and for which I should 
deserve never to be forgiven by the Christian world. 

No: I will not, because a few mad fanatics desecrate the pulpit 
and the hustings by Abolition ravings, give up the unrivaled 
blessings of the best Government on earth. These deluded and 
wicked men do not represent the mass of the northern people. 
When they shall, or when the Federal Government shall practi- 
cally assail the institution of slavery, it will be quite time enough 
to think of disunion, as a remedy against anti-slavery operations. 
You will see, from the views I have expressed to you, that all 
along I have taken a practical view of all the questions connected 
with this deplorable conflict. I have sought to take counsel of 
judgment rather than of passion, and the farther the conflict pro- 



33 

gresses, alas! how painfully am I reminded that I have chosen the 
wiser part! I have had constantly in my mind, and there to the 
end they will be kept and cherished, those remarkable sentiments 
of wisdom expressed by Judge Campbell to his fellow-citizens of 
Alabama, which should be written in letters of livins: liffht over 
the lintel of every American door: "IN MY OPINION, SEP- 
ARATE STATE ACTION WILL RESULT IN THE DIS- 
CREDIT AND DEFEAT OF EVERY MEASURE FOR REP- 
ARATION OR SECURITY." 

There are yet other reasons why I could not follow our State 
into secession. Conceding that the citizen is bound by the action 
of his State, I am released from the obligation now, because I am 
not satisfied that the act of secession in Virginia is truly the act 
of her people. It was not the choice of her people. I lament to 
say it, but the proofs are overwhelming, that outside pressure, in- 
timidation, coercion, misrepresentation, and sensation appeals, 
constantly made by the press and the politicians to the passions 
and prejudices of the multitude, forbade all freedom of thought and 
of action. Let us see. 

The press and the politicians, with untiring effort, impressed 
it upon the masses that the Lincoln Government would not leave 
them the semblance of a right. Hence, it was the common pop- 
ular expression, put into the mouths of the uninformed by de- 
signing disunionists — "we can't submit to a Black Republican 
Administration." And those who put this clap-trap argument 
upon the lips of the deceived, never took the care to tell the vic- 
tims of their deception that there was a decided majority in both 
houses of Congress, against the Black Republican Administration, 
and that that Administration was, therefore, powerless to harm the 
south. 

The people were told, next, that they would be far better off 
with an independent southern republic than with the old Union 
and that their taxes would be less, because then the south would 
no longer pay tribute to the north, and because there would be 
then no tariffs, but free trade, and direct trade, and cheap goods: 
appeals of all the most likely to delude the common mind. 

Thirdly, it was represented, with ceaseless repetition, that if 
Virginia seceded, there would be no war — that her influence and 
5 



34 

power were so great that the moment she seceded, all the border 
States would follow, and that then the Federal Government would 
"back down," and recognize the Southern Confederacy. 

It was next strenuously urged that the northern people would 
not fight. Senator Hammond said in a public speech that the 
moment it should be announced that eight cotton States had 
seceded, "the north would grow pale and tremble, and revolution 
would be there, not here." And it was said, further, that, if it 
came to a fight, one southern man was equal to five northern. 
Then came the assurance that if the war began, foreign inter- 
vention would soon end it. France and England, it was hourly 
said, ever willing to weaken American power, would soon inter- 
fere, and, by recognising the Southern Confederacy', secure its in- 
dependence, and give it peace. 

And further to inveigle the people into secession, it was earn- 
estly insisted that the democracy of the north were the natural 
allies, and had always been the friends, of the south, and that one- 
half of them would be on the side of the south, and that the north 
being thus divided and the south united, the latter would have 
its independence established without incurring any of the conse- 
quences of war. 

Later in the struggle the secessionists mended their hold, and 
advanced to more passionate appeals. The people were told that 
the war was begun by Mr. Lincoln, and "to subjugate the 
South. 

Then, again, it was urged that the war, thus begun by Mr. 
Lincoln, and against the south, had for one of its objects the 
abolition of slavery. 

And lastly, with a vehemence amounting to phrensy, the alarm 
was rung night and day, that Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of 
April 15, '61, was an out and out, actual declaration of war 
against the southern people, and an invasion of their homes. 

These artful and passionate appeals so fired the popular mind, 
and so stimulated coercion and intimidation that a popular con- 
vention was called to assemble at Richmond, (I think on the 15th 
of April,) for the purpose, it was generall}' supposed, and as I 
solemnly believe, to drive the constitutional Convention (then 
sitting) into the adoption of a secession ordinance. 

The cull of Mr. Lincoln for the militia to execute the laws, 



85 

which, as I have just said, was proclaimed and denounced, with 
demoniac excitement, as an actual and deliberate declaration of 
war against the south, forestalled the purposed action of this 
popular convention, having produced the result designed, the 
passage of a secession ordinance, which took place on the 17th of 
April. 

From the passage of the secession ordinance, to the 23d of May, 
when the final vote of the people was taken on it, the sensation 
efforts waxed fiercer and more wrathful, misrepresentation was 
redoubled, and coercion employed in every form, and when the 
hour of voting came, it is useless to say it was not a free vote. 
Had it been an untrammeled vote — a vote uninfluenced by fear 
or misrepresentation — I believe most solemnly that, this hour, the 
people of Virginia, instead of sufiering all the horrors of a fratri- 
cidal war, would be quietly enjoying the manifold blessings of the 
Union. 

I hold, with all deference, that a vote of my State, cast under 
such circumstances, is not binding on me as one of her citizens. 
The misrepresentation alone, to say nothing of intimidation and 
other forms of coercion, rendered the vote a fraud upon the elec- 
tive franchise, and fraud vitiates all transactions. 

I claimed the right, as a citizen, to judge the truth or falsehood 
of the various allegations on which the people of my State were 
asked to do the grave act of pulling down the noble fabric of 
Union, which their fathers had reared. I did judge, and my judg- 
ment was and is, that the allegations had no foundation in truth 
and fact. 

I did not believe in the wrongs to the south which had been 
charged upon the north. I saw no practical aggression by the 
Federal Government upon the rights of the south. I asked 
"where are they?" and echo answered, " where are they ?" I 
did not believe that secession could avert war. I did not be- 
lieve in peaceable secession. With the great Webster, I did not 
believe in the " breaking up of the fountains of the great deep 
without rufiiiug the surface." I did not believe in, or dread 
foreign intervention. I believed the north loould fight. I did 
not believe that the democracy of the north and west would fight 
for the south against the old flag. I knew, full well, that when- 



36 

ever traitorous hands should dare haul down the nation's star- 
gemmed banner, "the great Bell Roland" would toll, and mil- 
lions would rush from city, countr}", valley, and mountain, to 
fling back its glory-lit folds to the breeze. I did not believe, nor 
do I now, that the Federal Government began the war, nor can 
any man, who has the least regard for truth, so say. The war was 
begun when South Carolina, by secession, broke equally her own 
.faith, and the laws of the United States. 

The war advanced as each other State successively seceded. 
The war was palpable and unmistakable, and aggressive and 
wicked, when the forts, ships, arms, mints, and money of the 
United States, were forcibly seized by the seceding States. If the 
forcible seizure efforts and ships, and arms and mints, does not 
constitute war, in God's name what does ? Did not war flame 
when the Confederate States opened their batteries upon Fort 
Sumter, confessedly the property of the United States ? What is 
war but a hostile assault by one nation upon another? And 
who, in this conflict, made the first assault ? 

Nor do I believe that Mr. Lincoln's proclamation was war upon 
Virginia, or the south. And as this proclamation was most suc- 
cessfully wielded for inflaming the popular mind, and did more 
than all else, perhaps, to induce the secession of Virginia, I note 
the point especially. 

The proclamation was war upon nobody. It was defence 
against war. Nay, more, it was duty. The President of the 
United States would have been false to duty and to honor, if, 
after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, he had fiiiled to call out 
the militia. I think he should have done so the first moment 
after his inauguration; for he found, on his accession, several 
States by force resisting the laws of the United States, in actual 
possession of United States forts, and, indeed, in actual, undoubt- 
ful rebellion. Mr. Buchanan had virtually abdicated the Gov- 
ernment, and surrendered to the open violators of the laws and 
the avowed enemies of the Government, and Mr. Lincoln would 
have been entirely right if he had made the calling out of the 
militia the very first act of his Administration. In not doing so, 
he exhibited especial moderation, prompted, no doubt, by a 
patriotic desire for peaceful adjustment. In any event, he did 



37 

only what Washington had done before him. Washington called 
out the militia to put down the whiskey insurrection in Penn- 
sylvania, under the act of 1792; Mr. Lincoln called it out to sup- 
press a far greater and more wicked rebellion, under the act of 
1795, which was made more stringent than the act of '92, and of 
indefinite duration, whereas the act of '92 was limited to less 
than three years. These modifications were doubtless suggested 
by the Pennsylvania rebellion. At all events, there was the 
law — declared by the Supreme Court to be constitutional — in 
full force; there it was, staring Mr. Lincoln in the face, and com- 
manding him, "whenever the laws of the United States should 
be opposed, or the execution thereof be obstructed in any State, 
by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary 
course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the 
marshals, to call forth the militia to suppress the combinations, 
and see the laws duly executed." Had he, with this statute 
before him, failed to call the militia into service, he would not 
only have been unfaithful to his trust, but the sin of perjury 
would have rested upon him. Nor could the pregnant facts 
have been overlooked or disregarded that, on the 6th of March — 
seven weeks anterior to the date of the Proclamation — the Con- 
gress of the Conefderate States had made provision, by law, for 
raising an army of 100,000 men, and that the Secretary of War 
of the Confederate States had boasted, on the 12th of May — the 
day Fort Sumter was bombarded — "that the flag of the Confed- 
erate States of America would float over the dome of the Capitol 
at Washington before the first of July, and eventually over 
Fanneuil Hall itself" For what object was the raising of this 
large army provided for, but to resist the execution of the Federal 
laws within the seceded States? 

The proclamation, then, of April the 15th, was no war upon 
Virginia. 

No : Virginia herself commenced a war upon the United States. 
When the President called out the militia, he had the undoubted 
constitutional power to order their march at all times through the 
territory of Virginia, and of every other State. The Federal Gov- 
ernment has, exclusively, the war-making power for the whole, 
Union, and the power to declare war and raise armies includes 



38 

the power, necessarily, to march the federal troops all over the 
land. Had the militia then been marched into or through Vir- 
ginia, it would have been no invasion of the " sacred soil." It 
would have been clear right, not a warlike act. 

But which committed the iirst act of aggression, Virginia 
or the United States? The facts clearly put the responsibility 
on the former. As far back as the 30th of March, 1861 — eigh- 
teen days before she seceded, and sixteen before the procla- 
mation — Virginia had seized the United States guns at Bel- 
lona arsenal. This I kuow personally, for I was at the time, 
as yon know, a member of the Legislature, and resisted the 
act as unlawful and shameful. On the 17th of April, 1861, by 
order of Governor Letcher, the channel of Elizabeth river was 
obstructed bv the sinkinof of vessels loaded with granite, so that 
United States ships could not pass up to the Navy Yard at Gos- 
port, nor merchantmen to Norfolk, in pursuit of legitimate com- 
merce. On the 18th of April, a force was sent by Gov. Letcher 
to take possession of llarper's Ferry, when the Virginia forces 
fired on the United States soldiers, and killed two. April the 
18th, the custom-house and post office at Richmond were seized, 
and about the same time the custom-house at Norfolk, and the 
navy yard at Gosport. Now, all these were acts of war, and they 
transpired before a United States soldier trod the soil of Virginia, 
or a gun was fired within hearing of her people. On the 17th of 
April, Gov. Letcher issued his proclamation calling on the people 
of Virginia to hold themselves in readiness to resist the Federal 
troops; and on the 24th of April the State became a member of 
the Southern Confederacy. By this act, she became a party to 
all the hostile acts of the Government of the Confederate 
States — the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the seizure of the forts 
and ships, and all other illegal and belligerent acts of the new 
Confederation. All this was before any advance of a Federal 
army into Virginia. No advance was made, indeed, until the 
24th of May, when Alexandria was taken. Nor would a hostile 
Federal foot-print have impressed her soil unless she had herself 
first committed acts of aggression and war, and invited and al- 
lowed the armed enemies of the United States to make her terri- 
tory the battle-ground for the resistance of the Federal authority. 



39 



p%riSr.»t.. .,(1,0.. »nMk aw- "f* » »"«"'•• 

Proclamation ccuiiuq KJi"^ .-, f^rtipa-ovv 

and could not, until she had placed herself m ''^l^'^'f^^^^^ 

-■^t:h:sr:vt'i^r::i;n".:dr^^^^ 
:: "err: t own. .ud she taue„ ^v^i^z 

land, Kentucky, and Missoun every one "^ "^e' lo J^ ^^'^ ^^ 
wou d have been within the saving protection of the United btates. 
"wth what reason, then, can it be said that Mr. L-o'" ^l^^ 
war on Virginia, and invaded the homes of her people? And jet 
Thousand oHie citizens were hurried into disunion by the mis- 
luided notL, that they were acting on the defensive against an 
unconstitutional and aggressive war. .„frt^warwas 

Not less absurd was the pretext that the object of the war ^ as 
. Mt^te the south There was not one fact to justiiy such a 
dedtn £ Th proc aniation of April the 15th looked only to 
bet—n of th'e laws, and the defence «f «- Jap.t^ j^^^^^^ 
threat'ened sack; and, since, there has been no act of the Govern 
ment bearing the faintest semblance of subjugation. ^ 

And as groundless was the charge that general emancipation 
was an obfect of the war; for the Republican platform itself ex- 
pressly disclaims all right of Federal interference with the domestic 
affairs and institutions of the States; the House of Representatives, 
S n 1861, several monthsbefore Virginiaseceded, almost unani- 
mously 'leni d the right or the purpose of the Federal Govern- 
ZZt to interfere with slavery in the States; and at the extra ses 
^on in July last, that body, by all the votes but two-and those 
two of southern men-declared that the purpose of the war was 
not the abolition of slavery or the subjugation ot the south, but 
the salvation of the Government, and the restoration of he Union 
A or the Executive branch of the Government, it has done 
.othin. thus far to encourage the idea either of emancipation o. 
Lwation. What may occur hereafter, I, o course, caiuiot «n- 

:Vtake to say; but ^ ^^ ^^^^^^7^:^ 
S"r >hi! irtl^sibdelivvredinRhodelsla^ 
during the past summer, be any index to the future conduct of 



40 

the Admiuistratiou, the struggle we are engaged in will preserve 
the character, thus far exhibited, of an honest effort for the pres- 
ervation of the Government, and the bringing back of the ancient 
Union. 

I repeat, secession was never the act of Virginia. A large 
majority of the members of her Convention had been elected as 
Union men, and but ten days before the passage of the secession 
ordinance, the ill-omened measure had been voted down by a heavy 
vote. Nowlhold that the enactment ofa secession ordinance by men 
who had been elected and trusted by the people as Union men, was 
in violation of every principle of representative government and of 
good faith ; was, indeed, a daring fraud upon the elective franchise, 
and an outrage upon the sovereign people. The judgment pro- 
nounced at the polls in February last, which filled the convention 
with Union-pledged members, stood the judgment of the people 
until reversed by the same tribunal that had originally entered it up, 
and until set aside in the same solemn mode. Nothing had occu^rred 
to justify the presumption of a change of the popular sentiment but 
the President's Proclamation, which every member of the conven- 
tion well knew was in strict pursuance of law, and did not, as a 
hostile or coercive measure, embrace Virginia at the time of its issue, 
for then she had not seceded. What the reason was for this sudden 
and extraordinary shifting ; whether the outside pressure, in the 
shape of panic or intimidation, reached the hall of the conven- 
tion or not, I undertake not to say. But I do say that, for some 
cause or other, the men of that body, distinguished as many of 
them are, did not act up to the great duty of a great occasion. 
Secession, under such circumstances, bound no one. 

True, a vote of the people did, soon after, ratify the ordinance of 
secession, but the knee-shaking of the leading men was soon com- 
municated, as if by contagion, to the alarmed and credulous masses, 
and contributed materially to the result ; and, besides, it has been 
already demonstrated that, in that vote, there was no freedom. 
There was, in it, in truth, no more of moral freedom, than there 
would be of physical liberty in a person bound, hand and foot, with 
massive chains, too strong for human strength to sever. 

With these views, honestly entertained, you will perceive how 
difficult it must be with me to tread, even with my State, the 



41 



thorny path of secession. I could not, and thank God I did not 
yield to the misrepresentation, prejudice, passion, and intimida- 
tion which rendered her vote on her secession ordinance a nul- 
Mity, and I am quite willing to bear all the consequences, be they 

what they may. 

There are still other reasons why I could not favor secession. 
I thoucrht I saw, in disunion, the sure doom of the great southern 
institution of slavery. I am now convinced that my evil auguries 
are at least approaching fulfilment, and by the acts of the slave- 
holders themselves. None else could have shaken the founda- 
tions of the institution. Before this thing of secession began, it 
was reposing quietly and safely and acquiring strength, its antag- 
onisms grad^uallv compromising on account of the constantly in- 
creasing demand for cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, which are 
most naturally and successfully the products of slave labor. But 
necessity is a shrewd teacher: and it is now discovered that many 
reo-ions of the earth hitherto regarded as uusuited to the cotton 
culture, are well adapted to it. To say nothing of India and 
Australia-Central America and the Island of Hayti, with climate 
reasonably suited to white labor, can furnish cotton for the pres- 
ent consumption of the world. A few years' continuance of the 
war, by the high prices resulting from the sudden loss of the 
American crop, will stimulate the production of the staple in nu- 
merous parts of the world where it is not now raised, and then 
the southern monopoly will be gone, and with it will go southern 
slavery forever. Without cotton, what is slavery worth? 

Never have I known such an infatuation as that of the slave- 
holders destroying the Union to save slavery. It was never so 
safe as under the cegis of the Constitution of the United States. 
In this Union, it has "flourished like the green bay tree," and it 
has flourished nowhere else. I think the views I earnestly pressed 
upon our legislature just before the State seceded, and often be- 
fore, are those which should have governed the slaveholders ot 
the south. I said : 

"la ray iudaaieat, there is no safety for this institution save in the Constitution of 
the United Stites. There it is recognised and protected. No other property is speci- 
ally protected. Slaves are represented ; no other property is. This Union of ours is 
the great bulwark of slavery. Nowhere else has it flourished; and, break up the 
6 



42 

Union when you will, you knock away its strongest prop. A Southern Confederacy 
will be to it its deadliest blast, if not its grave. The whole civilized world is intensely 
hostile to slavery ; and the moment a new confederacy is formed, based on the single 
idea of slavery, numerous and malignant antagonisms will be evoked which may 
endanger the institution. But, under the shield of the Constitution of the United ' 
States, these antagonisms, whether foreign or domestic, are, and ever will be, harm- 
less. In that blessed instrument it is a recognised institution— part and parcel of 
our frame of government, and of our social and industrial systems— to the protection 
of which the entire power of the great Government of the United States stands 
pledged before the entire world. Thus secure under the wing of the Union, why 
shall we risk its security by rushing on untried experiments?" 

Yes, why should we? Why expose it to the exacting and per- 
ilous necessities of war? Why let it go within reach of a whirl- 
pool, whose strong vortex may sweep down its bark, and submerge 
it forever ? 

Another exception I am constrained to take to pursuing the 
course iny State prescribes me, is, that she has transferred me to"] and 
made me a citizen of, the Confederate States, without giving me 
a chance of indicating my assent or dissent. Bound hand^'and 
foot, I am sold to South Carolina, for site did the "dragging." I 
dispute the fairness of the sale; I impeach the indeiUui^es for 
fraud ; and if I am to be sold, I want the poor privilege of choosino- 
my master. I shudder at the thought of being sold to South 
Carolina. For near forty years she has been a disturber of the 
national peace; for near forty years she has never caught one in- 
spiration from the stars and stripes. She is a wicked, seditious 
State. She hates the Union ; / love it with all my soul. Let me 
never— oh ! let me never be turned over to such a State ! Let me 
be a Russian surf, rather! And then, to think of Virginia— once 
proud Virginia— the "mother of States and statesmen"— the 
land of stirring memories and "bright particular" renown- 
crouched at the footstool of South Carolina! ! ! 

One more reason why I could not venture the fatal leap of 
secession. I had not the courage-I frankly own I wanted the 
courage. When Walpole, a prime minister of Great Britain, 
was taunted with an unwillingness to tax America, he replied! 
*'I will leave that measure to some one of my successors who has 
more courage than I have." And so say L I leave this dangerous, 
awful thing of secession to those who have more courao-e than I 



43 

claim, to possess. And I trust that those who have shown more 
courage in this matter than I could summon, will not have occa- 
sion to be reminded of the ill-fated history of the Grenville min- 
istry, that, having more courage than Pitt and Walpole, did 
undertake to tax America, and, by so doing, lost to England the 
brightest jewel in her Crown. 

When I thought on the unhappy consequences that, I plainly 
foresaw, would come upon my State and her people; when I saw, 
as plainly as I ever saw God's sun in the heavens, that if Vir- 
ginia seceded, her territorj- would become the theatre of a devas- 
tating war, and she and her citizens the chief suflerers by it, 
while the guiltier parties who had brought it on would repose in 
the shade of comparative peace and ease; when I reflected that 
an absolute ruin of all her vital interests was inevitable; that her 
grand system of internal improvements — her future hope — would 
lie a heap of prostrate ruins; that repudiation even would be her 
doom by the exhausting effects of an exhausting war; that her 
people would, by blockade, be cut off from the markets of the 
world, their comforts abridged, the price of all the necessaries of 
life advanced to insufierable rates, and the burdens of taxation 
crushing down the energies of her tax-payers; that all the poor 
people of her tide-water region, whose subsistence was derived 
almost exclusively from the northern trade, would be reduced to 
starvation ; that she would lose, in the first month of secession, 
two hundred millions of dollars in her slave property alone; 
when I contemplated the penury, and want, and sufiering of the 
humble poor which war brings with infallible certainty for that 
more helpless class; the social desolation, the broken hearts, the 
helpless widowhood and orphanage, the severance of all the dear, 
sweet ties of life, the burning hates, the alienation of bosom from 
bosom, the "death-feud's enmities" which can die only at the 
point of the piercing sword, the separation of husbands and wives, 
and fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters, the blood and 
death of war's sad havoc: I say, when I thought of all these 
inevitable consequences of secession, my courage sank, and I 
resolved — I know now I was right — to have my skirts clear and 
my hands clean when the day of retribution should come. 

Caius Marius, at the end of one of the civil wars that had wasted 



44 

the blood and substance of Rome, was forced to sink himself up 
to the chin in the marshes of Minturna, to escape recognition and 
the vengeance of his wronged and ruined countrymen. I have 
no ambition, nor do I mean, to have the fate of Marius mine. 

Another consideration, of itself controlling, moves me against 
secession. In God's name, what does the south want with inde- 
pendence? It is no boon — it will prove a fearful and enduring curse. 

Provision for self-destruction being expressly made in the con- 
stitution of the Confederate States, by conceding to each of the 
confederating parties the right to withdraw at will, what can the 
Government end in but convulsing changes and revolutions, de- 
structive of all material advancement, and of all social quiet and 
happiness? Can such a Government last a lustrum? Can it, for 
example, confine within its restraints even for five short years, the 
turbulent spirit of South Carolina? Such a Government is no Gov- 
ernment. It is not worth a rush. 

And if all history be not at fault, border wars will be inevitable, 
and a taxation, to protect a long frontier, which would destroy 
the substance, and paralyze the energies, of any people on earth. 

The next bitter fruit will be entangling alliances with foreign 
powers, perhaps abject dependence on them, or, may be, ultimate 
subjugation. 

But this branch of the subject I turn over to a master limner, 
the Hon. Jere. Clemens, of Alabama, who spoke thus to the peo- 
ple of Iluntsville, during the last presidential canvass: 

" If secession could be peaceably effected — if the northern and southern States 
could be by common consent divided into two separate confederacies — if not one 
drop of blood was spilled, or one blade of grass destroyed, in making the change, 
it would still bring unnumbered evils in its train. There would be a standing army 
to be maintained of not less than 50,000 men, at a cost of $50,000,000 per annum. 
A navy must be built up, and the money for that purpose dragged from the pockets of 
the people. There would be a long line of frontier extending from the Atlantic ocean 
to the western limits of Missouri, and from the northern boundary of that State to the 
Rio Grande, which it would be necessary to stud with military posts, and every mile 
of which would require to be secured by armed patrols, for the double purpose of 
enforcing the revenue laws, and preventing the escape of fugitive slaves. Every har- 
bor along the vast extent of sea coast, from Delaware Bay to the Rio Grande, would 
require an appropriation of millions for its fortifications. The people would be 
ground down by taxes, and demoralized by the constant presence of troops in their 
midst, who acknowledged no restraints but those of military law. Incessant quarrels 
would grow up between you and your northern neighbors, and bloody wars would 



45 

desolate your frontiers, if they did not spread destruction throughout every portion of 
your territory'. 

The dream of a Southern Confederacy is the wildest vision that ever troubled the 
brain of a moon-stnuk enthusiast ; a dream interrupted by bloody conflicts with 
your neighbors, and a vile dependence on a foreign power." 

/ As for the other condition on which I may be safe in Virginia, 

the taking of the oath of allegiance to the Confederate States of 
America, I spurn it with infinite scorn. I would sooner rot in a 
dungeon than swear any such fealty. 

This Government of the Confederate States of America I re- 
gard as the grandest, most stupendous, foulest fraud known in the 
history of the world. It is no government of the people. The peo- 
ple had no part nor lot in the matter. It was, as to the cotton 
States at least, the precipitation of discontented or ambitious spir- 
its, that sought no redress for actual grievances, but who, for a 
higher civilization, or a pure slave republic, or some other Uto- 
pian project, longed to break down the government. "All 
changes in the fundamental law of a State, (said Mr. Calhoun) 
ought to be the work of time, ample discussion, and reflection." 
But how was it with the formation of this Southern Confeder- 
acy ? The South Carolina convention met on the 17th of De- 
cember, 1860, and on the 20th, she was out of the Union. And, 
in less than four months, eight star* had been struck from the na- 
tional standard. A government which it had cost our fathers 
seven years of hard fighting, and as many of hard experience 
and sober reflection to create, in four short months dashed into 
ruins ! And this without the people being allowed the poor priv- 
ilege of saying whether they would or would not sanction the 
vandalism ! I can swear by no such government. Nor do I de- 
sire to live, or have my children live, under a government 
which contains, in the very first paragraph of its constitution, 
the principle of dissolution. Give me, rather, a government un- 
der which I and mine will have some guarantee for safety to 
property and for stability in all the rights of society, some safe- 
guard against fickle change and destroying revolution. Give me 
the old Union — the Union of Washington and Madison, and Frank- 
lin, and not this poor abortion of Davis, Yancey, and Rhett, which, 

"Like the Borcalis race, 

That flits ere you can find the place," 

may be here to-day, and forever gone to-morrow ! 



46 

In truth, this struggle on the part of the loyal States, is a strug- 
gle for the very existence of the institution of property, and of all 
government itself As such, it ought to be, and must be, met. 

For one, I cannot listen to the dulcet strain which comes up 
from the south on a thousand strings, that this struggle of the 
cotton States is a struggle for the great principles of civil liberty. 
To put it on so honorable a basis, is bold imposture. The Con- 
stitution of the United States is the best system of civil liberty 
that ever emanated from human hearts and heads. It is the ac- 
cumulated political wisdom of the world, from the time of Magna 
Charta to 1789. Those who would subvert it, are no friends to 
civil liberty. They are strangers to the spirit of Hampden, and 
Russell, and Pym, and Algernon Sidney, and Washington, and 
Hancock, and Otis, and Thatcher, and Madison, and Clay, and 
Webster. Yet more unblushing is the eifrontery which would 
liken the contest in which the Confederate States are engaged, to 
the struggle for Colonial liberty in the Revolution. The com- 
parison is almost profanity. It utterly falsifies history. The great 
principle of the American Revolution was, that taxation and rep- 
resentation should not be dis-united. The Colonies contended 
that unless they were represented, they should not be taxed — 
that they who paid the taxes, should have a voice in their 
imposition. Is any such principle involved in the present con- 
flict? Was ever the right claimed to tax the southern people 
without representation? Has the Federal Government ever made 
the effort to deprive them of representation ? Before secession, 
had not the now seceded States full representation in the Con- 
gress — a representation of all white citizens, and three-fifths of 
all others, including slaves? And, by virtue of that representa- 
tion, has not the south nearly all the time controlled and shaped 
the Federal legislation and policy? Did not South Carolina 
herself, through her Calhoun and Lowndes, and other representa- 
tives, even fix upon New England the protective system? And 
how does the south now lose her representation in the National 
Legislature, but by her own silly, suicidal act of secession? And 
how has she fallen into her present position of peril, war, deso- 
lation, and ruin, but by seceding and giving up her representa- 
tion in Congress? Whose fault is it that she is unrepresented? 



47 

And how is it, except by the abdication of her rightful repre- 
sentation, that she is now pLiced within reach of confiscation and 
emancipation ? 

Such are the reasons that forbid me to be a secessionist. 

And I think my old friends in Virginia ought to pardon me for my 
great love of the Union, for I have had some good teachers among 
her distinguished sons, whose precepts I have never forgotten, 
and never shall forget. I quote, as the last section of this long 
defence, the following patriotic, immortal sentiments: 

'• When your fathers attempted to form this Union, they did not know, beforehand, 
what sort of a Union it was to be. 

" They set to work, and did the best they could under the circumstances. 

" What they would accomplish no man could tell. There was not a head upon 
either of them that had the human wisdom to foretell what it was to be ; but they 
went in for Union for Union's sake. 

"By all the Gods, by all the altars of my country, I go for Union for Union's sake. 
They set to work to make the best Union they could, and they did make the best 
Union and the best Government that ever was made. 

" Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, — all combined, in Congress or out of Congress, 
in Convention or out of Convention, never made that Constitution — God Almighty 
sent it down to your fathers. It was a work, too, of glory, and a work of inspira- 
tion. 

"I believe that as fully as I believe in my Bible. No man, from Hamilton, and Jay, 
and Madison — from Edmund Randolph, who had the chief hand in making it — and 
he was a Virginian — the writers of it, the authors of it, and you have lived under it 
from 1789 to this year of our Lord 1858, and none of your fathers, and none of your 
fathers' sons have ever measured the height, or the depth, or the length, or the 
breadth, of the wisdom of that Constitution." 

These are the words — of whom ? Of one of Virginia's favorite 
and most gifted sons — Henry A. Wise. They should be read 
every day in every American school, and be gotten by heart by 
every American youth. Long, long may they animate the Amer- 
ican heart ! 

And now, I shall take the liberty, in return for the uncharita- 
ble judgment and abundant denunciation which have been my lot 
in my native land, to venture to my fellow-citizens there a little 
advice, which, however unthankfully received, is honestly ten- 
dered. 

Give up this ill-omened and ruinous war. Require your law- 
givers at once to adopt the amendment proposed by Congress to 



48 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



011 933 357 P 



the Constitution to prohibit all interference with slavery in 
the States, and then return to your loyalty and to the Union 
of old. 

And I assign two brief reasons for the admonition. First, if this 
war be not speedily terminated, the institution of southern slavery 

perishesforever— notby the willingaetsoftheFederal Government, 
but by the current of irresistible events— a consequence, not an ob- 
ject of the war, for which secession alone will be responsible The 
highest interest of the slaveholders, if they desire to preserve their 
peculiar institution, is, THE SPEEDIEST POSSIBLE TERMI 
NATION OF THE WAR. Secondly, persistance in this strug. 
gle is vain. There is one reason establishing its vanity, independ- 
ent of all others, and that is, that the people of the Mississippi 
valley must have the free navigation of the " great father of wa- 
ters," and will have it at every hazard, and will" fight for it while 
a drop of western blood remains. They toill have it, I repeat. It 
is a geographical necessity, totally irresistible. The States of the 
lower Mississippi and those above, must belong to a common gov- 
ernment. There can be no divided empire there. Unless^the 
people of Virginia, then, are prepared to carry on this unnatural 
and wasting contest until the last western man— a race as brave 
as their southern brethren, and capable of for more physical en- 
durance—has fallen in his tracks, they had better at once throw 
down the arms of rebellion, and return to the Government 
under which they were always prosperous and happy, and under 
which their State was so rapidly advancing to power and grandeur. 
This long letter I have written as a defence of my course I 
desire to let my fellow-citizens of Virginia see that, while I have 
not been able to go with my State at this trying crisis, I have, at 
least, respectable reasons " for the faith that is in me." I trust 
you will make an effort to get it into some of the papers of the 
State, that this my defence may be known. It will be at least a 
consolation to my family, and to the few cherished friends 
whom neither the troubles of the times nor defamation have 
estranged. 

Affectionately, 

JOS. SEGAR. 



\ 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 933 357 A 



pH8^ 



